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What parents need to know

Positive messages

This look at families with small children/infants is fleetingly realistic, with each family struggling with issues like work/life balance and childcare. Having dads be the main caregivers for children is a challenge to traditional gender roles, though the idea that this is a great source of humor seems outdated.

Positive role models

The central friends are loyal to each other and caring about one another's problems and issues. But they do tease one another frequently and sometimes unkindly, and the women on the show are sometimes presented as unrealistically demanding and nagging. The men take their infants into bars and sometimes drink to escape the pressure of raising children.

Violence

Not applicable

Sex

Married couples are shown being amorous in various places like the bed and the bathroom while kids pound on the locked door. There's kissing, cuddling, and some mild sexual language. One of the dads is newly divorced and dating, so there may be some sexual situations in his life. One character uses his infant as a prop to flirt with an attractive woman at a bar.

Language

Some bodily function humor (such as joking references to dirty diapers) and some iffy language, such as when a mom refers to a babysitter's "big squishy grandma boobs."

Consumerism

Not applicable

Drinking, drugs, & smoking

The three main characters take their infants into bars in the afternoon, strapped on their bodies, while they drink beer. Some characters drink to tipsiness and are referred to as "slightly inebriated."

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Guys with Kids is a comedy featuring dads in the caregiver role for young children and includes plenty of body humor, often centering around diapers and potty training, as when one dad smells his infant's rear end to see whether he needs a change. One of the dads is newly divorced and dating; he sometimes uses his infant as a prop to attract women's attention. Married and/or dating couples may be shown kissing, flirting, and cuddling, both in bed and elsewhere at home. Characters are shown drinking in a bar with infants strapped to their bodies; other characters drink to tipsiness. The female characters on the show are often painted as less appealing than the males, and they try to disrupt the fun the dads on the show are having for minor, selfish reasons.

User reviews

Parents say

Kids say

What's the story?

The guys of GUYS WITH KIDS are three thirtysomethings who never planned to wind up as stay-at-home dads. Gary (Anthony Anderson) has four kids and a wife with a high-powered career; Nick (Zach Cregger) tries to get some computer programming in while chasing around his school-age daughter and infant son, and Chris (Jesse Bradford) shares custody of his baby boy with his brand new ex-wife. The three dads live in the same NYC apartment building and help each other out with dirty diapers and baby bottles, plus the bigger dilemmas of parenting, such as staying sane while beset by the wacky problems inherent in small child-raising.

Is it any good?

QUALITY

Parenthood, with its dignity-stealing pratfalls and absurd nonsense, is a rich source of humor. Unfortunately, Guys with Kids fails to find any of it. Jokes about diapers and potty training abound, and the show's creators seem to find the central conceit hysterical: It's dads taking care of kids! Not moms! Dads! Get it? Um, have you been to a playground in the last 15 years? There are plenty of dads out there cutting grapes in half and dispensing Band-Aids. Painting the show's premise as wacky and funny in itself just shows how out-of-touch the showrunners (one of whom is the usually funny, but childless, comedian Jimmy Fallon) really are.

It's too bad, really, because the cast is mostly charming. Anderson is wonderful even in terrible material, and he has genuine chemistry with his TV wife, The Cosby Show's Tempestt Bledsoe. The Sopranos' Jamie-Lynn Sigler is a welcome sight too, and she demonstrates crack comic timing. But the material she's given to work with, usually wifely nagging, is so weak that it's tragic. Oh, and one thing will drive parental watchers crazy: Though there are seven kids on the show, they seem to appear and disappear indiscriminately. Anderson is a SAHD with four kids, yet he's frequently out with just one or two of them. Where do the other ones go ... with his wife to work? Magic TV Kidland?

Families can talk about...

Families can talk about how realistic Guys with Kids is. Does the show ring true to your experiences? Do you think the people who created and wrote the show have children?

Guys with Kids centers around a trio of men taking on a nontraditional central role in childrearing. Do you know any stay-at-home dads? Do they act like the men on Guys with Kids? How are they like the characters, and how are they different? Do the moms on the show seem like moms you know?

All together, there are seven kids who belong to the three main cast members on Guys with Kids. Why don't you see them all onscreen most of the time? Is the children's absence realistic?

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About Our Rating System

The age displayed for each title is the minimum one for which it's developmentally appropriate. We recently updated all of our reviews to show only this age, rather than the multi-color "slider." Get more information about our ratings.

Guys with kids

I have no idea why this show is only 2 stars. This show is awesome! You will be laughing the entire time. There is some sexual induendo, two of the main characters try having a child, nothing is obviously shown. And some other induendo, nothing someone 12 could not handle.

Guys With Kids is an OK sitcom, barely worth the 20 minutes.

It's an ok sitcom. It's fun to watch if you are absolutely bored but it's not rib cracking hilarious. It's stereotypical, the ex wives are of course freaky stern, the dads are of course fun loving, etc, it's all very typical. A few kisses, not much to be worried about, and some drinking. It's funny but really blah-ish.

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